An emotional year of recovery from the Boston Marathon bombings culminated with a stirring tribute on Tuesday to the victims, survivors and all those who helped the city overcome the tragic events of April 15, 2013. With the families of the four victims of the bombings and their aftermath sitting in the front row of the event hall at Hynes Convention Center, there were speeches from survivors, dignitaries and elected officials, as well as musical interludes led by the Boston Pops Esplanade and the Boston Children’s Chorus. Later, a ceremony in Copley Square included a moment of silence, a flag-raising at the marathon’s finish line and the toll of church bells at 2:50 p.m., the moment the bombs went off exactly one year ago. The theme was set by the first speaker, Rev. Liz Walker of Roxbury Presbyterian Church, who began by uttering the words, “There is a rising.” The reference, of course, was to the community’s remarkable rise from the ashes, as well as each of the victim’s personal journeys from pain and sadness to triumph and resolve. “There is no way to walk to Boylston Street without being reminded of the evil spilling of precious blood, the hateful strike on a world treasure,” Walker continued. “But we are also reminded of the amazing capacity of the human spirit to rise in heroism, compassion and sacrifice. “An ascension of the human spirit, left to its own devices, its divine design, it will rise, despite anything, despite everything.”

(The Richard family with Mayor Marty Walsh)

Walker was the first to reference the victims by name. She touched on the remarkable qualities of Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell, Sean Collier and 8-year-old Martin Richard, qualities their loved ones retain in their memories. “Although the memories still bring tears to our eyes, our heart aches for those who were lost, it still is a comfort to be here with family and friends who got us through that tragic day,” Menino said. “I want you to hear this solemn promise,” he began. “When the lights are dim, know that our support and love for you will never waver. Whatever you have to do to recover and carry on, know that the people of Boston and I are right there by your side.” Others who were injured graced the stage at the convention center, providing some of the more poignant words of the two-hour event.

First up was Patrick Downes, who — along with his wife — lost their left legs in the attack. Downes discussed the “humbling” degree of love that he and fellow survivors have received over the year. He would not wish the trials of recovery on anyone, but sees merit in the triumphs. “We do wish that all of you, at some point in your lives, feel as loved as we have felt over this last year,” Downes said. He also took comfort in knowing, even if only in spirit, the four “guardian angels” that were lost a year ago. “We will carry them in our hearts. To their families, know that you will never be alone. We remember those who died as pieces of us. The intellectual charm of Lingzi. Sean’s commitment to justice. Krystle’s infectious smile. And the childhood charm of Martin. We will choose to think of them not in association with hate, but forever connected to our commitment to peace. “Peace. That will be their lasting message to us.”

As rain fell and wind blew through the Back Bay, hundreds left the convention center and strolled under umbrellas toward the finish line to help reclaim that territory. With law enforcement officials lining Boylston Street and the stands in front of the Boston Public Library packed, relatives of victims emerged — followed by Menino, Biden, Walsh, Patrick and Grilk — and took a spot in front of the finish line. There, they stood at attention in the rain to take in a rendition of “God Bless America” by noted tenor Ronan Tynan. Then came a moment of silence and bells tolled from the Old South Church, steps from the finish line. An American flag was pulled skyward as the crowd sang the national anthem. MBTA transit police officer Richard Donohue Jr. helped raise the flag high above what Menino labeled as “hallowed ground.” Indeed, a year removed from the unthinkable, there was a rising.

So John King is apoplectic that people are questioning if he’s a racist or not, too bad, he signed up for it when he went on national t.v. and said the Boston bombing suspects were black….I mean dark skinned. Let me tell you what I didn’t sign up for, I didn’t sign up to be followed around a department store, I didn’t sign up to have women clutch their purses as they walk in my direction, I didn’t sign up to hear the sound of car doors being locked as I crossed the goddamn street with bags of groceries in both arms, I didn’t sign up to walk in a bank to get some money out of my account and have the teller walk in a back room with my I.D. and have me wait for twenty fucking minutes just to get money out of my account, I didn’t sign up to have some white guy ask me I if was from this country just because I knew who Leon Panetta was, I didn’t sign up to have a realtor question me about my credit score and whether or not I’ve ever been arrested before I could finish saying hello, I didn’t sign up to have a waiter tell me the food in the restaurant I was in was expensive before he gave my wife and I the fucking menu. I’m not telling you these things because I’m looking for sympathy, I’m just telling you about the shit that the average black man has to put up with, so when John King gets upset at getting called out for an error he made, he should get on his goddamn knees and pray to his god that he doesn’t have to go through the same bullshit that the average black guy walking down the street does. Am I angry, hell yes, have I given up hope about the idea that a person should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, hell no.

Bloomberg: The Boston Marathon bombing, juxtaposed with the mass murder at Sandy Hook …. reveals an ideological component to the way Americans assess risk. In particular, Americans’ tolerance of mayhem and death varies depending on the source of the violence.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, was quick to revisit old fears about foreign terrorism in the wake of the Boston attack…

….. The emphasis on vulnerability and the “continuing need for heightened defenses” represents one side of an existential schism running through U.S. politics, with the dividing line separating mostly, but not always, liberals from conservatives. Many Americans accept the U.S.’s 30,000 gun deaths a year as a sad but inevitable price for all-but-unfettered individual rights to gun possession. A terrorist bombing, on the other hand, signals a need for “heightened defenses,” massive security and the routine compromise of liberty….

Stephen Marche (at Charles Pierce’s blog): As I write this, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Boston Marathon …. But this moment, before we know who did it, may be more important than when we do know.

The speculation has established three possible perpetrators: Islamic terrorists, domestic terrorists, or simple lunatics. The potential of this moment is that we can recognize that it could be any of them, that they all want the same thing, that they are, in the only way that matters, the same thing.

…. Whoever it turns out to be will incur a blame for entire groups of people — whether Muslims or American gun nuts — which are entirely accidental to their being. Let us pause, right now, and agree not to make that mistake.

TPM: …. Why were so many people in the media standing on pins and needles, wondering whether Obama would call what happened in Boston terrorism? …..

…. The media was listening for that word yesterday because they identified it as a potential source of a future, contrived political controversy; reporters were acting as opposition researchers for the people they cover, and identified a sin of omission….

…. most major media outlets typically distinguish terrifying violence from violent terrorism by examining motive. No political or ideological motive? Not terrorism … It’s why everyone feels comfortable calling the Unabomber a terrorist, but not the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Charles Pierce: ….. We should commend both Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis for their performance at the press conference Monday night — Patrick for slapping down that Alex Jones idiot plant, and Davis, for going out of his way, in one of the few pieces of actual information that was forthcoming at the whole press conference, to emphasize that there was no “suspect” in custody in any hospital, thereby dropping an anvil on The New York Post, which completely went to the zoo on this story yesterday afternoon. Good on both of them. And for Abdulrahman Alharbi, I hope he can still be as happy here some day as I suspect he was when Monday began.

Steve Benen: …. I’m reluctant to start talking about any single photo being the iconic image of the tragedy, but clearly this shot (see above), captured by Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki, is powerful and hard to forget.

…. there are three main officers seen in the foreground of this image, and the one on our right is Javier Pagan, who is Latino, gay, and the Boston Police Department’s LGBT liaison.

His husband is a retired NYPD sergeant, who helped rescue people on September 11, 2001.

Former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords listens as her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly speaks on Capitol Hill during a ceremony to honor Gabriel “Gabe” Zimmerman. Zimmerman was Giffords’ outreach director when he was killed in the January 2011 shooting rampage in Tucson where Giffords was wounded

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Yahoo News: Vice President Joe Biden told a former congressional aide Tuesday during a visit to the Capitol building that the Senate was just two votes short of reaching the 60-vote threshold needed to pass a gun reform bill through the chamber.

After a speech honoring Gabriel Zimmerman … Biden told former Giffords aide Pam Simon that the bill would pass and that two votes were needed.

“We will win,” Biden told Simon, who survived a gunshot wound in the shooting.

…. “We are working to get to 60, and it’s fluid,” Biden said. “I think we’re there, but it’s not unusual as you all know for people to make up their minds at the last minute.”

Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to participate in a Google+ Hangout about gun control Wednesday.

He will be joined at 2:45 p.m. by the mayors of Gary, Ind.; Baltimore, Md.; Minneapolis, Minn.; and Oak Creek, Wis., according to David Agnew, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs.

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Greg Sargent: A representative for families of the Newtown shooting victims has asked Senator Mitch McConnell to hold a meeting with them, according to sources familiar with the request. McConnell’s office initially declined the request on the basis of scheduling, a source says — and now family members are set to call McConnell and reiterate the request personally.

How will McConnell respond?

The request – if granted — would allow the families to come face to face with the primary architect of the GOP’s strategy of blocking everything Dems propose to slow the tide of gun violence. If it is denied, it would be a big story…

The Guardian: How much unemployment did Reinhart and Rogoff’s arithmetic mistake cause? All because two famous economists whose work is used the world over to justify austerity cuts just got their sums wrong.

That’s the question millions will be asking when they see the new paper by my friends at the University of Massachusetts … They show the correct numbers tell a very different story about the relationship between debt and GDP growth than the one that Reinhart and Rogoff have been hawking.

…. This is a big deal because politicians around the world have used this finding from R&R to justify austerity measures that have slowed growth and raised unemployment….

…. If facts mattered in economic policy debates, this should be the cause for a major reassessment of the deficit reduction policies being pursued in the United States and elsewhere. It should also cause reporters to be a bit slower to accept such sweeping claims at face value.

Charles Pierce (on the Next New Deal story): OK, I’ve kept away from this until I’ve read enough people who know what they’re talking about to feel like I know what I’m talking about but, like, wow… I’m still not entirely sure what’s really going on, but there is nothing here to disabuse me of my long-held notion that most economists reach their conclusions by cutting up a sheep on a rock and reading the entrails.

…. And are we at all surprised that a certain zombie-eyed granny-starver of our casual acquaintance was one of the delivery mechanisms into our politics for what may be one of the great public-intellectual blunders (or worse) of the century? Why, no, we are not at all…..

NBC: It’s an iconic image that captures a moment when one Boston Marathon bystander became much more. With blood-soaked hands and wearing a cowboy hat, Carlos Arredondo helps rush a young man in a wheelchair to safety after explosions turned Monday’s race into a disaster scene. He appears to be pinching closed a severed artery protruding from the victim’s thigh, stanching the flow of blood from a torn and shattered leg ….

…. [Costa Rica native] Arredondo had been at the race to support a group running for fallen veterans, one of them his son, according to the Maine newspaper, which described him charging in to help the wounded after the explosions.

….. In 2004, Arredondo’s son, Marine Lance Cpl. Alexander S. Arredondo, died in battle in Najaf, Iraq. When Marines arrived in a van to deliver the news, on Arredondo’s 44th birthday, he grabbed a can of gasoline and a torch from his garage, climbed inside the van and doused it, then set fire to it, severely burning himself in the process…

…. And in December 2011, just before Christmas, Carlos’ other son, Brian, 24, took his own life as U.S. troops were withdrawing from the war that left his brother dead….

Full article here – warning: the photo above is cropped, the full version is at the link

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It never fails.Whenever the worst of humanity comes to the fore, it is overwhelmed by the best of humanity. Let us celebrate the goodness.